The Best Laid Plans

I have written before about a friend of mine at work who is delightfully goofy and funny. She loves to play practical jokes on people, and she recently told me about one that didn’t go quite the way she had planned. She has a bit of guilt about this one.

Several year ago, my friend somehow obtained a realtor’s sign advertising an open house. In the dark of the night, she planted the sign in the front yard of a couple with whom she was friends. The next morning, the wife of the couple was awakened by people wanting to view the home for the open house. She was, understandably, perplexed. My friend was not aware that the couple was having serious marital problems. When the woman saw the sign, she immediately jumped to the conclusion that her bastard of a husband was trying to sell the house out from underneath her. No amount of denial on his part would satisfy her outrage. When she vented to my friend about the incident, my friend confessed all, but the woman wouldn’t believe her. The couple eventually divorced.

35 thoughts on “The Best Laid Plans”

i always have plans spinning toward the end goal but they often are simply world in progress

now practical jokes… i love practical jokes
i usually have them played on me because of my absent minded professor routine

i was laughing the other day about the time i was visiting my friends in laws in milwaukee. we went to the health club to play racquetball and afterwards went to the showers
the brother in law asked if we wanted to go for a swim. i said sure and h said it was trunks optional so we headed naked out of the shower down to the pool. he pointed me down the hall with my friends following behind as we got ready for the swim. i opened the door from the showers to the pool having a conversation with my friends over my shoulder as we entered and realized it was a family pool full of kids and moms and that they had all opted for the swimming suit option and that i alone had opted for the non suit option.

my friends never entered the pool but had a very good view of mr doing an abrupt about face and likely turning a bit of a shade of red in a spot or two.

my uncle paul was a famous practice joker and his standard was placing the wake up call in your hotel room for 330 in the morning

his best one may have been the time he placed the add in the fargo newspaper 10 days after christmas offering 50 cents for your used christmas trees to be delivered to …
insert address here
his friend had 25 little kids drag their trees from blocks away to collect the 50 cent reward

on april fools i once had a phone call to schedule an appointment for massage
i love massage so i asked when and they mentioned a time and i could make that fit then they asked for my address and i realized there must be some mistake. i thought you were scheduling me to come in for a massage… i don’t give give massages…

after two or three more i realized a joker had placed an ad on craigslist offering free massage call tim at…xxx…
the rang often that day.

Wow, what a disastrous practical joke your friend pulled Renae. That must have been horrifying. But really, that unhappy couple was stuck in their own webs. She just happened along with her joke and whammy.

My entire life is “Plans Gone Awry.” And really, that is fine with me. My parents’ intention for my life was to have been a farm wife. That was their version of the Good Life. Well, I was not having any of that. For one thing, while I love visiting rural areas, I adore city life–the busy-ness, the anonymity, the variety, the opportunity. The minute I attended a large university where no one knew me, I loved it.

The same thing happened with my intentions for my son. I thought his life would be one thing and I gave him those opportunities. What he did with them was different than my plans, but he is fine.

One thing I love about vacations and travel is that I can enter the experience with a plan, but the fun (or the misery) occurs when the real thing unfolds.

I think it was John Lennon who said: “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” For every plan I’ve had that didn’t work out, another half-baked one did. I never planned to live in America, in fact, the US was low on the list of places I wanted to visit. I was much more attracted to what I considered more exotic places. Yet, on Thursday it will be 52 years since I arrived in the US. Too soon to tell if that has worked out, depends on how much longer DT and the GOP are allowed to wreak havoc on everything from the environment to the the common man.

My plans, starting last Thursday, were to speak to the area retired teachers group about dementia, participate in two days of meetings in Bismarck for the Synod Candidacy committee (my last meetings for the end of my final term), drive to Fargo Saturday afternoon to meet up with husband and daughter and do some last minute shopping, drive the 300 miles home Sunday morning to play bells at the 10:30 church service (we made it), and have a meeting today for the regulatory board of which I am a member. That is now done. I feel as though I have run a marathon. I am going into work for only an hour today. The rest of the week shall be a piece of cake, I hope.

you do that stuff because you get a kick out of renee
you are a good fan of the amazing things you can do
what are you going to do when you retire? chris retired and invented a full time schedule 200 miles away.
if you follow his lead you can make it 400n miles and meet every other weekend
is he aware of the trailers with gourmet kitchens tyou can travel with?
maybe he could cook where he is instead of waiting to come home. seems like lots of missed opportunity
then you guys can travel with it in retirement

I don’t really plan very much, but last week a friend brought us a meal. It was very tasty: meatballs, nice mashed potatoes, cooked carrots with honey and horseradish, and an ice cream pie. I planned on having leftovers for lunch the next day – I especially had my heart set on having one meatball. I thought surely, since I had had just one the night before and it seemed like there was plenty, that I could have one more meatball. Well, I was wrong. There were no meatballs left – mashed potatoes and carrots in abundance but not a scrap left of the meatballs. Boy was I upset.

I invited our pastor to my bachelor party. Pastor Mike is a really cool guy. And during our pre-marriage classes he made a comment that he didn’t know how to have fun. And I said he should come to my party. It wasn’t going to be anything crazy, it was just at a friends house. And no one knew him so it would be perfect. He agreed, got included on the list, and showed up at Beau’s house on the designated night.
When people asked what he did, he said he was in foundations.
He left a little early, saying his wife told him to be home early and the other guys all laughed at him. He laughed with them because it wasn’t true; he just wanted to make sure he was gone before anything happen that he didn’t need to know about. (Nothing did. The party was probably slightly R-rated, but never got more than that.)
A week later we’re at the church for the wedding rehearsal. As we start Pastor says “I’m Pastor Mike. I might look familiar to some of you. That’s because I was at Ben’s bachelor party. And I remember who you are and what you did.” And everyone laughed nervously. But one of my groomsman reached up and grabbed my shoulder and whispered in my ear “I’ll get you for this!”. Mike loves this story. He tells it often himself.

I had planned to be at work on time today. I took the bus, and had about 15 minutes to kill at the transfer point in downtown St. Paul. I walked around a little and arrived at my stop a few minutes before the expected arrival time of the bus I was waiting for. Got out my cell phone and sent a text message to the number that tells you how long before the next bus comes. I thought my bus would be among the next two or three listed, but it wasn’t. So I sent another message, this time specifying the route I was looking for. Then I looked up and the bus was there. I was standing in the bus shelter, instead of out at the sign pole where the bus picks you up, and the driver slowed down a little and then cruised by without stopping. So I missed my bus and was ten minutes late for work.

Sometimes the new technology that is supposed to make your life easier just trips you up instead.

I’m weary and cranky, there just isn’t a damn thing that’s going the way I want it to, so please disregard snooty comments I make. Despite my intent to not offend anyone, I appear to be offending most.